An immense volume of paper is generated by working commercial offices. Large fractions of this volume of paper must be securely stored and securely destroyed to prevent theft of information. For example, offices which deal with consumer reports for business purposes in the United States are subject to the requirements of the Federal Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA) which requires proper disposal information of consumer reports and records to protect against “unauthorized access to use of the information”. The “disposal rule” as it is known requires entities to follow appropriate measures to dispose of outdated consumer reports and all sensitive information derived from them.
In the prior art, disposal of large volumes of documents is usually accomplished by document shredding services. Document shredding services provide trucks with portable shredding equipment. The trucks transport the portable shredding equipment to the site at which the documents are located. A bonded courier then moves the documents from the office to the truck where they are shredded. The bonded courier can then attest to the secure handling and destruction of the documents once they leave the office.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,927,074 to La Rue discloses a container for storage and transportation of documents. The box includes a closure. Cable ties are threaded through grommet holes in the closure and the handles in the box to secure the closure and box together. However, the box and closure are designed to be used together to form a closed and sealed document transportation container. Once sealed, additional documents cannot be added without breaking the seals. Also the box cannot be closed and sealed without the corresponding closure.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,040,722 to Fromian discloses a packing box that is “self-locking”. The box comprises a bottom having a plurality of sides. The sides of the bottom include flaps. The top includes a slot designated to accept the flaps. When the box is closed, the slots engage the flaps and prevent the top from being removed. To open the box, force is applied through a hole in the top to push the flap out of the slots. However, the box and the top are a single integral piece and cannot be separated without destruction of the box.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,130,271 to Hammond discloses a box used for packing articles. Outer flaps of the body of the box engage an inner lip of the cover. To remove the cover from the body, a force is exerted a hole to disengage the flaps from the inner lip. However, there is no provision made for addition of documents to the box after the box is secured. Further, no provision is made for preventing unwanted tampering with the contents of the box during transport. Further, no provision is made for closing and sealing the box without the removable cover.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,116,007 to D'esposito discloses an interlocking tray and detachable cover. Flanges on the tray flex outward to engage locking ridges on the inside of the cover. To remove the cover, a force is applied through a hole in the cover to the flanges to disengage the cover. However, there is no provision made for addition of documents to the box after the box is secured. Further, no provision is made for preventing unwanted tampering with the contents of the box during transport.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,958,747 to Chipp discloses a container which incorporates a “knock down” type bottom box and a closure closure. The closure closure comprises a strengthening frame having a side wall and inwardly turned flange. The bottom box comprises an outwardly turned flange. The flange on the box engages the flange on the closure to close the box. The flanges may be released by tabs on the flaps of the box. However, Chipp does not provide for the addition of documents once the closure closure has been sealed to the bottom box. Further, no provision is made for preventing unwanted tampering with the contents of the box during transport.
The prior art does not provide for secure collection of sensitive documents within the office on a large scale. The prior art provides only the use of boxes with dedicated closures which cannot be used for secure collection of documents on an ad hoc basis.
The prior art also does not provide for destruction of documents in remote geographic areas. For instance, in the prior art portable document destruction cannot be efficiently carried out outside of large metropolitan areas. For example, there is always a finite number of document destruction vehicles in a large metropolitan area. Since these vehicles are usually heavily utilized, it is impractical to send them to remote geographic areas to provide document destruction services. The reason, of course, is that the time that the document destruction vehicles are on the road is time that the document destruction equipment cannot be used. The farther the trucks must be sent from their home location to be used, the fewer documents can be destroyed and therefore the less efficient and more expensive the document destruction service becomes.
The prior art does not disclose or suggest a reusable document collection closure that can be repeatedly used with a plurality of boxes having integral tops. Moreover, the references listed above do not disclose or suggest a slot in the closure that allows documents to be placed in the box on an ad hoc basis after the closure has been secured to the box.
It is therefore a goal of the present invention to provide a document container system which provides a verifiable method of ad hoc collection, storage and transportation of a large number of confidential documents for destruction and that promotes the efficient destruction and storage of confidential documents in remote geographic locations.